We are having a much more pleasant day today, temperature wise. In fact, our overnight low last night dipped down to 9C/48F! I actually had to turn my fans off. 😄 Right now, coming up on 6:30pm, we’re still at our high of 21C/70F, which has been sooooo enjoyable!
I did end up watering the garden this afternoon, though. This time with water soluble fertilizer. The NPK on this fertilizer was 18-18-21, rather than the acidifying, high nitrogen fertilizer I used before. With so many things developing their fruit, they need that higher potassium and less nitrogen.
While I was watering in the main garden area, I saw something that made me smile!
We have pole beans developing! So far, just one purple Carminat plant has them, but the others are blooming, so I’m hoping to expect more. The green Seychelle beans that were planted later, to fill the gabs where the Carminat failed to germinated, will likely be a couple of weeks behind.
While watering the San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks, I saw our first tomato that’s starting to show a blush of red.
At this time last year, most things were farther along, and we were still harvesting bush beans, and even some summer squash and some decently sized carrots. Still, things are growing well, for all that they’re behind in the growing season. As long as that frost holds off, we should have a pretty decent harvest at the end of the season.
Plus, we should soon have beans, corn and shelling peas to harvest!
Well. As long as something else doesn’t get them first. Like a deer. At least we don’t have problems with groundhogs this year, and with all the yard cats, rodents and hares are not a problem at all!
I counted both adults and kittens, though I know at least the two new kittens were missing. I saw the orange fluffball earlier, but it was gone by the time I started counting.
I counted 36.
Which is interesting, since that’s about half kittens. In the winter, we have the most cats around the house, where there is safety, food, warm shelter and warm water to drink. In the summer, many disappear, with some popping by every now and then, others not returning until the fall, or not returning at all. Last winter, we tended to have a high of 33 cats. So having 36 cats (38 if I count the two new kittens that I know were hiding somewhere nearby), including kittens, is interesting. I honestly expected more, even taking into account the number of kittens, plus an adult cat, I buried this year. Certainly more than a net increase of about 5!
In the end, we’ll see how many there are in the winter, when the explorers start returning. Hopefully, we’ll have more than just Button adopted out, too.
He does get creative when it comes to getting the nip! It took me a while to figure out what I was even looking at! 😄
Adam is so patient with the kittens. She doesn’t seem to care at all, how many are trying to nurse her at the same time, or how much they are trying to push each other around to get at a nip!
As for getting Button to his new forever home, we were not able to connect with the Cat Lady this weekend. They did make it out to their cottage, but are still dealing with too many health issues right now. Her son is recovering, though, and that’s the important thing! She’s asked me to let her know if I’m heading to the smaller city where we usually meet, in the next week. Heck, I’ll make the trip special, just for that! Button will be taken to a vet clinic first, before going to the vet that is adopting him. I was happy to hear that. He is just not getting noticeably bigger, and I’m concerned for him.
It’s time for my progress report! If you’d like to see the earlier photos to compare, you can visit the posts from July 28, July 30 and August 1. Links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊
I work my way from one end to the other, and try to follow the same pattern, so once again we start with the Summer of Melons mix in the future trellis bed.
This includes the new melons I found earlier today. I put bricks under the melons touching the ground, except the new ones. I’ve been training the vines of those on the netting, but they came loose, so they ended up on the ground again. I was hoping to avoid using more jute twine in training them, but tomorrow morning, I’ll have to make a point of bringing it with me when I do my morning rounds. I’ve got the wrong kind of netting for this. This finer netting is more for keeping birds out, but it’s what I had. The wider netting I’ve got the peas and beans climbing on would work better, as I could weave the vines around the netting.
As for the melons hanging above ground, some of them look like they’re going to need hammocks to support their weight soon!
There is one that’s looking more and more yellow. I suspect this is a sign that it is going to be a loss, and that it will start to shrivel or rot on the vine. We shall see.
These are the African Drum Gourds I’ve found so far. At this stage, it’s still possible they aren’t properly pollinated and might just dry up and fall off the vine. I hope not! If I’d spotted the female flowers earlier, I would have hand pollinated them, just to be on the safe side. Ah, well. I’m just thrilled to see any at all.
They have the softest fluff on their surface at this stage, too!
Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.
There’s a couple in there that may or may not make it, and one with a flower that will probably open tomorrow – and I’ll me sure to look out for it to hand pollinate it!
There are so many hidden melons I found among the leaves today! There is even what looks like the first female Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon about to bloom. There are no male flowers, though. Unless there is a sudden overnight burst of male flowers, this one won’t have a chance to fully develop. I don’t think it can cross pollinate with the other melons!
This being the beginning of August, I don’t think we’ll get any watermelon this year. Yes, it’s a short season variety, but just about everything is behind about a month or more. Mind you, this year has been full of surprises, so I guess anything can happen between now and first frost!
I love having things in the garden that let you see just how much growth is happening, in such a short time! Even with taking photos every second day, I can see – and sometimes feel – the difference. Then there’s finding new ones, hidden under the leaves like that. It’s like Christmas! 😄
I so look forward to being able to harvest and try these! Well, not the drum gourds, of course. 😄
This may be the strangest gardening year we’ve had so far, but in a way, I’ve found it to be the most fun, too!
With the photos I took of the garden for my mother today, I realized that I haven’t really been doing general photos to share here. I’ve been doing that in the garden tour videos. So this is basically a photo tour of the garden today, and how things are doing.
The Goldy zucchini is blooming now! I didn’t get photo of the summer squash in pots, but the green zucchini is also blooming, though it’s not looking very healthy at all. The Magda squash is not blooming, but the plants are looking healthier. Go figure!
I set the images on Instagram to include the whole image, not just a cropped square, but for some reason, it didn’t take. So the image with the chocolate cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence is cut off, and you can’t see the potatoes in the background.
The kohlrabi seedlings are getting nice and big! I’m quite excited by them. Every time I’ve tried to grow them in the spring, they’ve failed entirely. This time, I actually have seedlings! They are protected from the deer by the netting but, unfortunately, the cats like to go under it and lie right where the kohlrabi are! So some of them are squished.
I didn’t bother taking a photo of the sad asparagus bed, or the sunchokes. The sunchokes, at least, are doing well, and are very tall.
The late potatoes are really huge and starting to show signs of dying back. The sugar snap peas are still growing and producing, which is a bit of a surprise. Early peas are usually done by now. The carrots seem unchanged, but the chard seedlings are definitely getting bigger, though in some spots, they seem to have not germinated at all.
The eggplants are growing bigger and blooming a lot right now; adding the grass clippings on top of the paper and cardboard mulch seems to be just what the doctor ordered! Even the hot peppers seems to be getting a boost from it, with more flowers, though I can’t see if there are more peppers forming.
The Crespo squash is really sprawling out! Cut off in the image is the single squash that’s growing, though I’m starting to see more female flowers again. Way too late in the season, though, for anything to come of them, unless we have a really long and mild fall.
I had to split up the photos of the main garden area into two Instagram batches.
The melons in the future trellis tunnel bed are doing quite well! I keep finding more and more hidden melons as I try to train more vines up the netting. This afternoon, I found even more, and have been putting bricks under the ones touching the ground to protect them. Even the surviving bush beans are looking really good. The onions gone to seed are getting so tall, they’re starting to fall over!
The pumpkins are also doing great and – much to my excitement! – when I was going through the vines this afternoon, I actually spotted some baby drum gourds! I never even saw female flowers, as they were hidden in the leaves! They are still at that stage where they might simply shrivel up and drop off but, hopefully, the pollination stuck.
There are quite a lot of peppers developing, hidden among the leaves. Only the dark Purple Dragonfly peppers seem to be getting ripe, though. The others are still very, very green.
Last night’s rain seems to have given the winter squash a huge boost; they just exploded in flowers this morning! All male flowers, but that’s okay. As I was going through them this afternoon, I kept finding more and more developing squash! I’ve been putting bricks or scrap pieces of boards under them as I find any that look like they’ve been successfully pollinated.
The shelling peas are not getting very tall, but they sure are getting lots of flowers and pods developing! This is really late for peas, but they were also planted late, and I’m impressed with how well they’ve survived the heat. I think the shade from all those squash leaves definitely helped!
There may not be a lot of pole beans, but they sure are getting tall! They are also starting to bloom, so I hope will will have something to harvest, soon.
The corn in the other winter squash bed is also doing very well. A few have fallen over in the wind, but I’ve been able to use the dollar store row cover hoops we aren’t using anymore to support them. Those are turning out to be quite handy, and I think I’ll be picking up more of them when I have the chance.
Finding a tiny tree frog on the biggest winter squash just made my morning! I love frogs! We have SO many of them this year, too!
The second melon bed is also doing fabulous. The watermelon is even starting to finally bloom. I found so many melons in there that were hidden among the leaves! I have been putting bricks, scrap pieces of wood, and even flat rocks under any that I find that look large enough to not dry up and fall off. I’m seeing many, many more tiny melons among the vines, but most of those will probably fall of, We shall see!
The San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area are looking amazing. These are the ones that were the last to be transplanted, and the weakest, most damaged seedlings. Yet now, they have these thick, strong stems that don’t even really need the support posts! I think there’s lots of tomatoes on there, but it’s hard to see through the leaves. I haven’t been pruning them or anything, so we’ll see how that works out. The onions around them are doing well, too.
The shallots in the other bed aren’t doing as well – I think they’ve been rolled on by cats. The G-Star pattypan plants are getting so huge! The White Scallops are growing, but still quite small. The yellow bulb onions are going okay, except for one corner where it looks like something rolled right over them.
Then there is the strawberry bed. The deer eaten plants are recovering – and even starting to bloom! They might actually produce more berries this year! What an amazingly hardy variety! I’ll have to get more of them, that’s for sure.
The San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks are producing fruit and growing, but nothing at all like the ones in the main garden area. The mint is doing well and I later harvested a large amount of it. Enough to make some jelly or a syrup, I think.
None of the garlic is ready to be harvested, still. This is quite late for garlic! The Forme de Coure tomatoes are thriving, as are the Black Cherries. What a difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes! Those cherry tomatoes are getting so tall, they’re starting to get higher than the lilac they are climbing through! The little strawberries we grew from seed also seemed to love the rain we had last night, and are just full of ripe berries. Even the luffa are getting noticeably bigger, though still nowhere near producing flowers. Ah, well.
So that is how the garden looked today. I wish I could say my mother was happy to see the pictures, but the closest she could come to a complement was to say how she hoped I’d be giving her some winter squash later on. 😄
Which I was planning to, even though when I did that before – at her request – she looked confused and told me she didn’t know what to do with it. She never grew winter squash. Just zucchini. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out for her!
As for me, I’m pretty happy with how things are looking right now!
I was finally able to connect with my mother last night and, as expected, she needed a grocery shopping trip. So we made plans for that, and I headed to bed early.
I even fell asleep!
Then, in the wee hours of the morning, I rolled over and got hit with a Charlie horse. After much pain and difficulty, I finally managed to reach my phone and send a voice to text message to my daughter, asking for help.
I love technology.
She was able to give me a hand, bring me some ibuprofen, etc., until the cramps finally eased off. When I was finally able to walk, she stayed close while I made my way to the bathroom and back, ready to help me get back into bed if I needed it. Thankfully, I did not, but the muscles kept threatening to cramp up again. I finally got up and made myself something to eat. By the time I was done and able to get back into bed, I slept so hard, I never heard the thunderstorm and heavy rains that swept over us! I didn’t know we’d had a downpour at all until morning. My leg was still unstable, so I asked the girls to do the outside stuff and water the garden, but the garden didn’t need it this morning.
My mother and I had plans to go out for lunch before I did her shopping, so I intended to be there on the early side. While the girls did the outside stuff, I still wanted to check on things before I left, which reminded me to take pictures of the garden beds to show my mother.
One of the first things I saw as I headed out from the sun room were the new kittens – and their mama!
It is now confirmed: their mama is Sprout. I knew she must have had a litter somewhere, but this is the first time we’ve seen her with kittens.
The orange kitten looks so fluffy!
Unfortunately, Sprout is one of the more feral of the yard cats. She is even aggressive to the other cats, snarling, growling and hissing at them if they come too close. That might make it harder to socialize those kittens!
Then, as I was heading to the truck to head to my mother’s, I spotted Brussel’s last kitten.
She and her baby still like to hang out in and around the garage, much like Broccoli and her babies prefer to hang out by the garden shed.
The visit with my mother went okay. When I got there, she told me she was not up to going out to eat, so she’d made lunch, instead. I wish I’d known in advance, or I would have brought food. I don’t like eating her groceries! It did give us a chance to talk, and I showed her the photos I took of the garden (those will be in my next post), then we went over her shopping list, which included a stop at the pharmacy.
There were a couple of things I forgot to pick up when I went to the grocery store for ourselves, yesterday, so I did both our shopping at the same time. I even picked up a few extra things for my mother that weren’t on her list, but the prices were good, and I knew she could use them. Other things, I found substitutes, because the prices were too high. Still, she’s now well stocked for the week, and that’s the important part.
The visit did have its down sides. After I’d put everything away, she had the local paper out and open. Our vandal has made his annual “in memory” listing about my late brother, with a colour photo of him with my late father. This impressed my mother greatly, because he does it every year, and it costs extra to include a colour photo. The fact that the content is passive aggressive and misleading – even outright false, in one thing – she is totally impressed by it. I told her I’d already seen the listing online, and she was all “and you didn’t tell me?” My response was, why would I? He does this every year, and it’s not like he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart. She then launched into making excuses for him and how he’s doing such great things, like volunteering to cut grass at the cemetery. Which I’m sure he made sure she knew about. Well, I visited the cemetery, too, but I don’t tell her about it, or about the flowers I added at the family graves, etc. Coming from me, she would find ways to either tell me how I am doing it wrong, or find a way to turn it around and start saying how great our vandal is.
Then I found out, he’d come by her place recently.
I told her, he shouldn’t be doing that.
She, of course, tried to turn it around on me, because that’s what she does. It took me a while to figure out what she was saying, because she phrased it so oddly, but she essentially said, if my daughters did what our vandal did, would I cut them off entirely? I told her, if they did what he did, yes! I would hold them responsible and accountable. I then called her out on making excuses for him the way she does, pointing out that he’s stolen 10’s of thousands of dollars of stuff from her that was on the farm (heck, his taking stuff was one of the biggest reasons she asked us to move here!), but that’s okay because he put a colour picture in the paper? He does this stuff because people have been letting him get away with is for years. I’m the first person to stand up to him, and he ended up vandalizing the place, we have to keep the gate locked, and worry that he’ll suddenly show up and try to burn the house down or something.
She changed the subject after that.
That was pretty much the only real downside of the visit. Mostly, I think she was just too tired to be as difficult as she usually is.
I didn’t stay too much longer after putting things away, since I did have my own few purchases getting hot in the truck, so I headed home soon after.
Once at home and settled, I gave the outside cats their lysine enhanced kibble. Since it’s the more granular type of lysine, I have been making sure the kibble bowls get some water in them, so it’ll stick to the kibble. With some of the bowls, I add extra water, as the kittens seem to prefer it, and this way they are getting more hydration in this heat, and the lysine will be dissolved in the water. Some of the kittens are getting leaky eyes and noses, including Button, and I want to make sure they get their lysine! It helps strengthen their immune systems.
No sign of the new kittens this time, though.
Then I went into the garden, but I’ll talk about that in my next post.
As for how things are now, my leg is still feeling like it’s about to start cramping up on me. More so as I’m sitting down then while I’m walking around. I’m going to be feeling downright nervous, getting into bed tonight! I’ve been looking into the various possible causes. One was the lawn mowing in the heat, but I didn’t do anywhere near as much as I have in the past. Lack of electrolytes is a possibility. I’m already taking B12 and Magnesium supplements, but it looks like I might be low on potassium and sodium, too. At least, those are the only possible causes I can be proactive about. Others include things like “getting older”. 😄
When I went into town, I just had a few things on my list for the grocery store. Once I got there, though, I found they had some really good sales going on and I ended up doing a bit of a stock up shop!
This is what $115.78 looks like.
Yeah. Even with the sales, it doesn’t look like much!
I did get some treats this time. The multipack of Coffee Crisp is for my husband. The Kit Kats multipack were for my daughters and I. The ketchup was actually on my list. So was the whipping cream, which is for some no-bake cheesecake we want to make.
I just noticed it says low sodium for the ketchup. I hadn’t noticed that on the label! Ah, well.
I got a couple of boxes of cookies on sale for us to try. I can’t remember if we’ve ever had them before.
There was a good deal on the red grapes, and large clamshells of blueberries. I think the blueberries would go very well on top of a no-bake cheesecake!
Hot dog buns were on sale, so I got a couple of bags, then picked up a large package of wieners to go with them. I got 300 grams of sliced Montreal Smoked Meat from the deli; it was on sale, though still expensive. When it comes to deli items, they don’t show the “you saved” line.
I got some French bread and marinated artichokes so the girls and I can do a charcuterie with the fancy cheeses and salami that I picked up during previous stock up trips. The marinated artichoke is for that, as well.
I was really happy with the sliced bread that was on sale. They were so fresh, the loaves were still warm when I picked them up off the shelves!
Last of all is a poppyseed roll. It’s been years since I’ve had some! My mother used to make then when I was a kid, using poppies we grew ourselves. I don’t see them regularly at the grocery store, so I made sure to grab one.
Looking through the receipt, it shows I got almost $35 in savings on this trip. Had these been regular prices, the final bill would have been a little over $150.
So… yea? I mean, I’m glad I got the sale prices, but I remember when, not too long ago, those would have been the regular prices!
Gotta take advantage of the sales and stock up when we can, though – and that includes a few treats. Those are always a good psychological boost when it’s near the end of the month but still a ways away from when pay comes in. I like to reserve something special for times like that, whether it’s a sweet treat, or some high end steaks. That’s something I learned to do back when we were way, way tighter, financially, than we are now. The morale boost of having something like that to enjoy when the fridge is otherwise empty, or the money ran out before the month did, is just as important as keeping to bellies full!
While watering the luffa, I saw the dew had condensed and was collecting on the very edges of each leaf. Very pretty!
Once the watering was done, I headed in for a quick breakfast, then headed back out. The grass was still so very wet, but I wanted to get at least some of it done.
I had brought over the lawn mower and getting it ready when I spotted the new kittens.
The orange kitten and the baby Hypotenose I’d found in the outer yard were in the inner yard! I’m hoping that meant they found the kibble.
Unfortunately, I had to scare them off once I started mowing.
I kept the bag on the mower to collect the clippings, emptying into the wagon as I worked on a section of the south yards. The grass was so wet, the opening into the bag kept getting jammed, so I was having to empty it a lot more often. One wagon load of clippings went into the compost heap, around the opportunistic tomatoes, potatoes and onions growing in there. The summer squash in pots got their mulch topped up, which was just a few handfuls of clippings. The rest of the clippings got spread out on the black landscape cloth/tarp in the main garden area to dry in the sun.
The other side of the south yard has a lot of creeping Charlie in it, so I won’t be able to use most of the clippings for mulch. That will just get piled somewhere else. Fresh green grass clippings – especially when they are wet like this – get insanely hot very quickly, and the middle of a pile starts to turn black and slimy in short order. That should kill off any creeping Charlie. I’ll probably dump it on top of the litter pellet compost pile. Normally, in the summer, we’d be burning the litter pellets together with any burnable garbage we have, but first the area was too wet, and not it’s just too hot to stand outside, tending a fire! So we’re still dumping the litter behind the outhouse, as it normally reserved for the winter. It’ll break down, but won’t be anything we’ll use as compost in the garden. The damp, creeping Charlie infested grass clippings should help it break down faster.
But that will be for tomorrow!
By the time I finished the section of yard, it was already 25C/77F. I wanted to go into town today, so I called it for mowing, and will continue tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be a bit cooler.
My trip into town ended up being an unexpected stock up trip, though! I’ll do another post about that, later.
Among my stops in town was a lumber and hardware store I tend to forget exists. It’s near the edge of town, and I don’t usually go that way. I had completely forgotten there is a huge festival in town, starting tonight, though I think some events have been already on for awhile. It’s a long weekend with Terry Fox Day on Monday, though this festival has been around far longer than that. I used to enjoy going to it when I was a kid, and it was still rather small. Now, it’s gotten much bigger. Enough people come out for it that this one traffic light town sets up temporary traffic lights at the intersection next to the hardware store I went to. It wasn’t until I was on my way home that I found they’d set up another set of temporary lights at the other end of town. That’s a first.
I no longer try to go to this festival. I just don’t have the patience for the crowds.
Anyhow; I ended up getting some replacement hose connectors, as I’ve got a couple that I’ve replaced that are leaking, then ended up getting some 4′ lengths of wood lath. I had to ask about it, as I didn’t remember the name of them. It’s basically just some cheap lumber that might be handy with some of our smaller building projects.
From there, I went to the dollar store and found a number of odds and ends we needed, then headed to the grocery store. I had only three items on my list, but found there were some really good sales and ended up getting stuff I’d intended to pick up later in the month, plus some treats.
So I guess it was a sort of productive day, even if I didn’t get as much of the mowing done as I’d hoped. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish it off, tomorrow, except…
I came home to a message from my mother. She just said “this is your mama” and that’s pretty much it. I called her back, but got her answering machine. My guess is, she’s going to want me to go over tomorrow and help her with grocery shopping.
The thermometer in the sun room was reading 39C/102F. This thermometer is against the west wall, about 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling. It does not get direct sunlight on it.
The thermometer outside my husband’s bedroom window was as high as the needle could go. If the numbers went that far, it would be about 60C/140F. This thermometer get blasted with the full sun for most of the day, in a mostly sheltered corner of the house. No shade and rarely any breeze.
The last thermometer is stored in the top of a cat shelter shelf. The shelf is in full sun, but the thermometer itself was in shade inside. It was reading 43C/109F. Of all the thermometers, I’d say that one is the most accurate to how it felt while walking around the garden beds.
Wow.
Honestly, I’ll take that over matching temperatures on the other side of freezing. Not that we see -60C/-76F, but we do see -40C/F at times, and that is far more deadly.
A couple of evenings ago, I took photos of our squash, pumpkins and melons, using my hand for perspective. Today, I did it again – but this time, I found more to take photos of! Since Instagram allows “only” up to 10 photos in a slideshow, I split the squash and melon photos up by beds.
Yes, I was able to find melons in the second bed this time! I had spotted one before, but today I moved the leaves around and found others.
I dug around in the leaves and found some “new” ones, too. In one photo, there are two melons, but the leaves and vines prevented me from getting a photo of them both, individually, so one of them is only half in the frame.
They’re getting big enough that they are starting to look like distinctively different varieties, too.
The smaller ones are getting noticeably not-small anymore!
The pumpkin vines are getting intertwined with the drum gourd vines. Those have many male flowers, but I have yet to find a female flower anywhere. It’s possible I can’t see any under all the leaves, but I think that’s unlikely. I’m wondering if they are getting enough water? These have a buried gallon water bottle buried next to their bases, so they get watered slowly and deeply, but a gallon of water might not be enough for something like this. I don’t know. It seems to be sufficient for the pumpkins, though!
The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with shelling peas and pole beans.
The first and largest one is among the few Summer of Melons mix transplants that were left over. The others, I’m not sure. They look like they are the same variety, but one was on the far side of the single surviving Cream of Saskatchewan water melon, which I know for sure are not from that mix. That would make them Sarah’s Choice melons. We grew those last year, but they were grown in a bed next to two other varieties and the vines were so mixed up, we lost track of which were which. The other melons in this bed would be the Pixie melons.
Oh, wow. I just linked those to where I bought them, and my goodness, the prices have sure gone up!!! Especially for the Pixies!
If you want to compare how fast these have been growing, you can check out the comparison posts I made on July 30 and July 28.
We may not have anything to harvest on a daily basis this year, but we sure to have a lot growing!
If the warmth keeps up, though, we might actually be able to have things to harvest. The bush beans first had to survive the slugs. Then they had to survive the deer. Amazingly, there are some that have recovered enough that they are starting to bloom! So Royal Burgundy bush beans are a possibility.
There aren’t a lot of pole beans, either, but they are also starting to bloom, so we might be able to harvest both the green Seychelles and the purple Carminate beans at some point. Which isn’t going to be easy, with all those winter squash vines growing around them! The shelling peas seem to be very prolific, with lots of flowers and developing pods, but it will probably be at least a couple more weeks before any of those can be harvested. The corn is also going to be a bit longer; they are sure releasing a LOT of pollen right now!
We also have green tomatoes developing, but nothing is even close to ripening, yet. Then there are the summer squash. I have no idea if we’ll get any green zucchini, Magda, Goldy zucchini or White Scallops, but I think we’ll definitely be getting some of the G-Star patty pans to harvest at some point. They’re not blooming yet, but there are buds starting to form, at least.
What a strange, strange gardening year. That rain we had in the spring really messed things up and set things back. We had Saskatoons blooming, but there are no berries – it was probably too wet for the pollinators. The cherry tree by the house isn’t going to have many berries, though there are some that are ripening. One chokecherry tree in the spruce grove is showing berries, but the one next to the main garden area has almost nothing on it. Even among the crab apples trees, there are a couple of trees where I’m not seeing any apples! These are the ones that have small apples the birds like to eat. The ones with apples that we like to eat do have apples on them, so the timing of blooms and pollinating seems to have been just right for those trees, but not the others.
We have plenty of pollinators, though. I don’t usually see them, but when I’m going through the garden, I can hear them buzzing. I will still hand pollinate the squash if I spot a female flower, but the melons have so many flowers that are so small, hidden among so many leaves, it’s all on the pollinators for those!
With the spring set backs, we can only pray to have a long and mild fall to make up for it!
As my SIL once told me some time ago; if we depended on our garden for food, we’d be starving! 😄
Well, we reached our predicted high of 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and we’re not expected to start cooking down until well into the evening.
I had a much interrupted night, so the girls took care of the outside stuff for me, including watering the garden, so I could try and get some more sleep. Which is rather difficult when, every now and then, a cat will suddenly get the zoomies and parkour off my body while careening across my room. What a way to be awakened!
I did make my trip into town, late this morning. It was slightly delayed when I stopped at the post office to pick up a package, and found my daughter’s computer was in a day early! I’d even checked the tracking this morning, and it was still saying tomorrow, by the end of day. Once I had that, I went back home to drop it off, then headed into town. My daughter hasn’t tried to take it upstairs yet. Her old computer is still chugging away, backing things up onto online storage – a very sloooooow process. She’ll start getting the new machine set up during the night.
I had intended to see what errands I could do while I was in town after sanitizing and filling our water jugs (it’s a different grocery store than where I usually go to, that has a sanitation station with their refill fountains), I got a message from my husband asking if I could swing by the Greek restaurant and pick up a couple of gyros for him. I found out this morning that my husband had eaten almost nothing all day yesterday – he just didn’t have any appetite – and his blood sugars dropped dangerously low. He had to pop glucose tablets to get himself back up again. The water refill station at the grocery store happened to be next to their pharmaceutical section, and they had some of the glucose tablets in stock, so I grabbed a bottle. With his Ozempic dose being doubled, the danger of his blood glucose levels dropping are much higher. Which ticks me off because I am 100% certain that is his chronic pain could be brought under control, he blood sugars would normalize. However, there’s no fix for his back, and so far, no pain killers tried have been able to get it under control. At best, it become more bearable. It’s like when he was diagnosed diabetic the first time. After that he was diagnosed with sleep apnea and started using a CPAP. Almost immediately, his blood sugars normalized and he lost about 100 pounds. I suspect the increase in dose for the Ozempic is more for the potential side effect of weight loss, but he’s been on this stuff for years now, and it has had zero effect on his weight. Plenty of other side effects, like losing much of his sense of taste, a loss of appetite, loss of muscle mass and intestinal distress, but his weight just won’t change.
Needless to say, when he asked for the gyros, my other plans went out the window, got his food and headed straight home with it, and skipped the other places I was going to check out.
I had been thinking of going to the dump later today, when it opens for the evening, but we really don’t have enough garbage and recycling to make it worth burning the gas in another trip.
My other plan had been to try and get some lawn mowed this morning, before it got hot, but that didn’t work out. Tomorrow is supposed to be a little bit cooler, so I will see if I can get it done then. In fact, our entire 10 day forecast has changed and, after tomorrow, we’re now supposed to be closer to 20C/68F instead of in the 30C/86F range.
I just got back from refreshing the cats’ water bowls outside, and adding frozen water bottles in a couple of them to help keep them cooler. The cats are just splattered all over, trying to keep cool
So happy to see Button in there, getting some nip!
I’m just looking back at some of my garden posts from a year ago. At this time, our garlic was all harvested and curing, and I tried planting beets, radishes and spinach in the empty bed (they did not do well at all). I was also harvesting bush beans, turnips and G-Star pattypan squash. Not a lot, but at least something! I was even getting some yellow zucchini and the odd green one from the plants that survived getting eaten by slugs. We had Black Beauty tomatoes getting so big and heavy, we had to add extra supports. Our Spoon tomatoes were turning red, and our Sweet Chocolate peppers were covered in developing fruit. We even started harvesting some Indigo Blue tomatoes, and our Pink Banana and Georgia Candy Roaster had so many huge squash developing!
I’ll be doing another garden tour video in the middle of the month. Hopefully, things will have progressed between now and then! It should be interesting to compare the two.
For now, though, the main priority is to keep things protected from the heat.
The Re-Farmer 